Zak's Cantina — Restaurant in Ottawa

If there were zero stars, I would give zero stars for service from the gal behind the bar on Tuesday, August 23rd, 2022 at around 1pm. My husband walked in with our 2 kids and ordered a chicken nugget and a pogo stick kids meals. On the menu, it says that the meal includes a drink and dessert. My husband didn't ask for the drink and dessert when ordering, thinking that the waitress would ask later. When the food arrived, she didn't bring drinks and ice cream with the meals, and my husband asked about them. Then the waitress said you should have asked when you're ordering the meal. She proceeded to prepare the drinks as if we did something wrong. Then we asked for the dessert. She checked the menu to see if it came with a dessert. Shouldn't she know? She couldn't see the dessert so she said "what do you know? The meal doesn't come with dessert anymore." turns out she was looking at the breakfast menu. She begrudgingly gave us the ice cream. Before we left, we asked her for take out spoons but there none so we got forks. The last thing she said to us was," next time, you should tell me in advance because I can't read your mind!" how rude! As the host, shouldn't you be a little more polite? Also, you should ask the customer if they want the juice or dessert instead of chiding them for asking for it later. It's the server's job to clarify the menu. Not the customers. It just made me so mad that she was rude too. We will definitely not go back again. Everybody in Ottawa was nice until we came here....

The wait staff was quite friendly, but that was one of the few highlights. We brought 4 of our teenage/adult kids, so there was 6 of us in total. Nachos were our appetizer order, we all had milkshakes, and we had 4 banquet burgers, 2 bacon cheese hotdogs, with the sides a mix of fries and onion rings. Here is the result of our $200 order, which WAS ordered all at the same time:

Milkshakes (mix of flavors) delivered first...$6.99 each, but absolutely yummy. My wife and I soon received our burger and fries orders. We were done before our kids received their orders 20 minutes later. That is when the appetizer was delivered... Isn't that supposed to be first? And OOPS, my son was missing his side. They went back to get it. The burger meat was dry, slightly charred, skinny, and tasteless. Worst $15 burger/side combo ever. I found the fries were very similar to KFC fries, with a similar coating and condensation-type sogginess. Skip them and get the... Onion rings were thick and delicious. After all this, we saw 2 groups that arrived after us had finished and received their bills while we waited and waited. We had to send a busboy to get out bill. TL;DR friendly but ineffective, slow service. Weird mix of horrible quality food and yummy food....

This was the worst restaurant experience in terms of both service and quality of food. Our server took 15 minutes after we were initially seated, it took another 25 minutes to get our appetizers, then they brought one person’s food out (we were a group of 4) and we waited another 10-15 minutes before everyone else at our table got our food. I got beef enchiladas which were supposed to have sour cream on it (it did not) and it tasted like they mixed beef with mashed potatoes (kind of like if perogies were rolled and deep fried instead). My fiancé got the cheese burger in paradise. The bun was over toasted and stale, the burger was dry, and the salad was warm and soggy as if it was sitting under a heat lamp for the 15 minutes it took our server to realize only one person got their food. When we all finished our food, it was a half hour wait between taking our last bites and our server coming to the table to ask how things were going. On top of that, he had us try our debit card 4 times before telling us it’s a cash or credit establishment. What a garbage experience. Someone tell the head chef to taste the food because...